At the risk of being labeled chauvinistic, I’ll opine that, while all music belongs, potentially, to all interpreters, performers often have a special insight into the music of their own country. No one should advocate limiting Tchaikovksy to Russian interpreters, for instance, or Gershwin to American musicians—or Smetana and Janacek to Czech performers. But just as sometimes Americans can bring a special flavor to Gershwin, and Russians often manage to bring a unique perspective to Tchaikovsky, Czech conductor Jakub Hrusa clearly owns a wonderful and powerful vision of the music of Smetana and Janacek, as demonstrated at Thursday’s concert of the Dallas Symphony at Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center.

While the Czech music didn’t show up on the concert until after intermission, the non-Czech curtain-raiser—Mendelssohn’s Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream—boded well for what was to come, with spacious tempos and a sure feel for the shimmer and grandeur in this score. (Even the irritating intrusion of a cell phone during those wonderful long pauses at the beginning of the recapitulation didn’t spoil the magic; conductor Hrusa just extended one of the moments of silence until the ringing stopped.)

Superstar flutist (and reliable box office draw) James Galway joined Hrusa and the orchestra for a sturdy albeit unremarkable performance of Mozart’s Flute Concerto No. 2 in D. The assembled forces followed up with a couple of short traditional Irish works and a bit of Bach—though not listed on the program, obviously planned and rehearsed—in which Galway turned on the full force of his Gaelic charm and, interestingly, adopted a slightly darker tone for “Danny Boy.”

After inermission, the Czech music. Smetana’s The Moldau has survived generations of duty in music appreciation classes. Hrusa made it fresh again, continuing his highly flexible tempos, careful phrasing and timing of melodies, and strong sense of the folk tunes at the heart of this work. And, while Hrusa’s reading of The Moldau was surprisingly powerful, his rendition of Janacek’s Taras Bulba was revelatory. As of 2011, Janacek, once dismissed as a musical eccentric meaningful only to audiences in his own country, has come to be recognized for the unique genius that he was. Although there’s a story line behind this three-part symphonic poem, Janacek’s almost manic journey, in Taras Bulba, from Wagnerian romanticism to noisy modernism stands on its own, especially in the hands of a conductor clearly attentive to the details and complexities of the score  yet capable of bringing an almost extravagantly folk-like aura to the music.